Just adding my voice to the din, I hate the new template change from post combat main to second main on every card, which is very functional errata on cards like Neheb the Eternal. It nerfs a lot of things in extra combat decks. Entirely too many things are once per turn these days, there's no need to change to older cards to that too.

There are a lot of things to juggle when changing terminology. The impact on a single card often isn’t as important as other gains made.

Huge thanks for reading the selection from Cunningham I agree that player desire needs to be part of design The 3 psychographics might be the most important design factor since the golden trifecta But it seems recently that Mtg has veered too much towards "give the players what they want" and the question 'how does this make the game better?' doesn't get asked enough I saw an ask for UB play doh, your response was 'do people want it?' not 'how does this improve MtG?' I know that's subjective

I, as well as all of R&D, are constantly asking “is this good for the game”. There are plenty of things the players want that aren’t necessarily good for the game. If we listened to the players every card would cost 1 less and could be cast whenever you could cast an instant. : )A great example of this is “once per turn” restrictions. Players generally dislike them (at least when it’s written out), but they make the game play better. Knowing what players want is a useful tool, but we’re but no means beholden to it when it gets in the way of good game design.

FYI on May 16th I asked that given how disguise reworks morph and the dev issues with heroic, what would you consider changing to rework heroic. You replied “there is an upcoming set that answers that very question”. I presumed you were referring to a Marvel set, but qanadhar left a comment certain it was Bloomburrow. Just some of the fun foreshadowing of Blogatog. :)(I presume there’s an article or podcast that explains the rework soon?)

Next week’s article talks about the mechanics. Short version: heroic looked into allowing abilities, but there existed things you could repeatedly activate for 0, so we left it off. Valiant added abilities back in to help it trigger more, and used the once a turn restriction to deal with the problem interactions.

"The flavor [for once per turn card draw] is white draws long, that is it sets up the proper condition and then gets rewarded with card draw over time. It’s slow, methodical card draw." My issue is that all colors have "once per turn" effects already. Heck, Dimir had a set theme's worth of it in OTJ with Committing a Crime cards, and some of those were even card draw. It feels less flavorful and more like a stopgap for card balance.

The goal is to make decisions that make sense for how that color needs to draw, not to create a situation that’s unlike other effects. In other words, the feel of gameplay trumps uniqueness.

I gotta say, I am not a fan of the "once per turn" draw in White. It just doesn't have the same mechanical bite that other colors have like Red's impulse draw/rummaging or Black's sacrifice for power. Can we see more of a push in forms of White card draw that thematically fit, like charity (Secret Rendez-Vous), compensation (Discerning Financier), and retribution (Esper Sentinel) with less ETB card draw and "draw a card because you did something" (Wedding Announcement, Welcoming Vampire)?

The flavor is white draws long, that is it sets up the proper condition and then gets rewarded with card draw over time. It’s slow, methodical card draw.

Slickshot Show-Off really didn't need +2/+0 for every noncreature spell for being a cheap creature with flying and haste. And what happened to abilities triggering only once each turn? This is ridiculous. Just give cheap creatures prowess and give something like this to more costlier creatures. We're past the Phyrexian arc, can we get back to a level of normalcy please?

It’s a rare costed for constructed formats. It gets to be very good in limited.

This may be a "if you started magic over again" question, but have you considered making all abilities "once per turn" in the rules, and writing out whenever they can be used any number of times so they read better?

There’s an inertia problem. Thirty-one years of cards exist written the other way. Many players have learned the default, so changing it would cause a lot of confusion.

Can you speak to the design behind Ancient Cornucopia? At Mythic, I was surprised to see the once per turn clause there. Is gaining life like that something that needs to be limited in green, the way card draw is in white?

It’s not core to green life gain to limit it. That was a choice for that particular card’s design.

If/When: A triggered ability with a trigger limit of more than once per turn.

There are triggered abilities now that trigger more than once a turn. They usually use “whenever”. Triggers that happen based on a certain phase/step starting or ending can only trigger once.

Good morning, Mark.I'd like to ask for a ruling for Discord, Lord of Disharmony. The copy effect at the end of the ability mean every time you cast something with Discord you get to see another random card, right? Because I have seen multiple people assume (I hope mistakenly) that it means every time you cast something Discord gains another instance of the ability so it would trigger multiple times at your end step.

No, getting a new random card only happens at the beginning of your end step trigger, so only once per turn.